Use of minimally invasive procedures, such as catheter ablation, to treat a variety of heart conditions, such as supraventricular and ventricular arrhythmias, is becoming increasingly prevalent. Often, these procedures involve the mapping of electrical activity in the heart at various locations on the endocardium surface, referred to as cardiac mapping, to identify the mechanism of the arrhythmia followed by a targeted ablation. To perform the cardiac mapping, a catheter with one or more electrodes can be inserted into the patient's heart chamber.
Cardiac mapping techniques include contact mapping, near-contact mapping, and non-contact mapping. In contact mapping, one or more catheters are advanced into the heart and physiological signals resulting from the electrical activity of the heart are acquired with one or more electrodes located at the catheter distal tip after determining that the tip is in stable and steady contact with the endocardium surface of a heart chamber. The location and electrical activity can be measured on a point-by-point basis at, for example, about 50 to 200 points on the internal surface of the heart to construct an electro-anatomical depiction of the heart. In near-contact mapping, a movable catheter having multiple spatially distributed electrodes is placed in a heart chamber of interest and moved to one or more locations within the chamber of interest, where the electrodes are on or near, such as within millimeters of, the endocardium surface of the heart chamber. Measurements are taken automatically at each of the locations of the catheter, without determining whether the electrodes are in contact with the surface of the heart. These measurements are analyzed to detect the endocardium surface of the heart chamber in the vicinity of the catheter. The location of the catheter, e.g., a location provided by a tracking system, and the measurements from the electrodes are used to reconstruct the chamber anatomy, where, for example, 20,000 measurements may be made to construct an electro-anatomical depiction of the heart. As the tracked catheter is moved inside the chamber, a partial or complete representation of the chamber anatomy can be constructed. In non-contact mapping, a multiple electrode catheter is placed in the heart chamber of interest and the catheter is deployed to assume a three dimensional shape. Using the signals detected by the non-contact electrodes and information on chamber anatomy and relative electrode location, the system calculates and provides physiological information regarding the endocardium surface of the heart chamber. In these cardiac mapping techniques, the generated map may then serve as the basis for deciding on a therapeutic course of action, such as tissue ablation, to alter the propagation of the heart's electrical activity and to restore normal heart rhythm.
While mapping a patient's heart, the patient may present multiple different types of cardiac rhythms, mixed in time, which the user wants to map and/or the patient may present a paced rhythm. Typically, the mapping system is set to capture one type of cardiac rhythm for a current map. If the cardiac rhythm changes, the new type of cardiac rhythm is not added to the current map. To capture signals associated with the new cardiac rhythm type, the mapping system must be reconfigured to an existing cardiac mapping configuration that matches the current cardiac rhythm or the mapping system must be reconfigured to capture the current cardiac rhythm. However, determining whether an existing cardiac mapping configuration can be used for the current cardiac rhythm can be a difficult and time consuming process and programming a new mapping configuration into the mapping system can take anywhere from 10 seconds to more than a minute, either of which may result in lost data and frustration.